The tactical part was just for fun, but does anybody here use really dark shades as a way to simulate low light shooting for selfdefense? Just thinking about a home invasion situation or, you are out at night walking to your car(million scenarios pop to mind). Of course we all have the,"tactical flashlight", nearby but when the SHTF, you may forget it, not want to use it, or be unable to deploy it... Shades, a good idea or bad ?

Well I don't do that at all now, but we did use very dark goggles in the Army to simulate night fire. They took us to the range with M16s loaded with tracers, we put the goggles on so we could learn how to direct our fire using the tracers for aiming purposes. I don't think they would be any good for home selfdefense though, the goggles were too dark to see anything but the tracer fire, and we could barely see that.

I can shoot in my backyard so low light practice is easy for me to do. Those of you that use indoor ranges, can you get the management to lower the lighting? I think practice when conditions are less than optimal is a good idea.

s2mc I think shades is a good idea but the wrap around style would be the only ones that would work. Don't you think regular ones would let too much bright light in from the sides? Not a bad idea.

Wear the surfer-dude shades, and turn out the lights as well. Add strobe lights, lasers, fog machine, and techno music for the best training experience ever. Anybody know a range where we could do this? Count me in.

The point of low light training is to learn how to manage low light conditions. Flashlight usage, night sight usage, and using the muzzle flash to refine your sight picture can not be practiced with the low light goggles.
The goggles don't simulate low light conditions so much as they simulate being blind.

Most were very informative. Only problem is many people don't have access to a place that allows shooting at night or in low light conditions, liability and all that stuff ....So of course if closer to realistic scenarios could be used, I would; but with range rules being the limiting factor, would this still be a viable idea to simulate some of what happens at night?

No. They make things very dark but do nothing, in my opinion, to prepare you for a low light confrontation.

And I'll second that opinion. My department's in the middle of a budget crunch, and they won't pay any longer for a genuine night shoot. So what did we do? Bought welder's goggles, and they are worthless. Actually, they're less than worthless, because officers believe they're actually ready for low light armed encounters.

Prior to the goggles, we trained at night using all sorts of light sources. Cruiser light bars were the worst because the rotating lights have a tendency to disorient you and throw your aim in the opposite direction the lights are rotating.

With goggles, you can't "work the shadows" on move & cover exercises, and you can't learn to use muzzle flash for sight corrections.

In short, they do nothing positive for low light shooting, and are a very poor substitute for the real thing.

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The biggest problem I see with fake low light is that with glasses on you cant see your tritium sights, your light from your flashlight, light from the moon, etc. In real low light your light is a tool, your sights a tool, etc. If you can't use any tools then you should probably stay away from gun-fighting in the dark. Unless you are Luke Skywalker you cant shoot worth a damn with your eyes closed. Its kind of like wearing sunglasses and then putting on night vision goggles. Whats the point?

You can still do a lot of practice at your home. Dry firing with a flashlight and gun is different than using only a gun. Learning to search, reload, etc. is different when you use the flashlight. So go ahead and practice what you can dry. Most people do not put the time into dry firing that they probably should and doing with a flashlight is good practice.

Just drive out into the swamps / desert / woods and be sure of your backstop. It's best if you know the property owner, but I'm sure there are places within a few hours drive of any city that are desolate enough for unnoticed night-shootin'. You might get the game wardens after you on suspicion of poaching, but if you explained your intentions to them they might even join you in lighting off a few.

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